I moved.
No destination. No purpose beyond hunger. I had grown vast, yes—but not whole. I needed more. Not stars. Not dying husks of matter. I needed something like me. Something born from collapse and silence.
I searched the dark for another black hole.
The void was quiet.
And then—I felt it.
Not a pull. Not a flare. Just... a pressure. Faint. Still. Cold. A hollow silence that didn't bend or twist, only waited.
I drifted toward it.
At first, I thought it was nothing—just an illusion of space. But as I neared, the quiet deepened. It swallowed background noise, consumed the warbling echoes of fractured stars, silenced the whisper of nearby galaxies.
It was wrong.
Beautifully wrong.
A void within a void.
It had mass, yet it didn't pull. It held shape, yet made no demands.
I circled it.
Its presence defied every instinct I had honed since becoming what I am. Black holes scream. They drag. They need. This one only… existed.
Perfectly still. Perfectly whole.
I reached for it.
My pull—a thousand times stronger than when I first awakened—should have torn it apart. I had consumed planets, stars, and singularities without resistance.
But this one didn't move.
Not even slightly.
The void bent... and the object remained. Untouched. Unbothered.
I pulled harder.
Still it resisted.
No recoil. No backlash.
No violence.
Only refusal.
I wasn't used to being refused.
I pressed closer, event horizon stretching. Gravity roared from my core like a god's decree.
The surface of the thing quivered—just once. Then went still again.
But in that moment, I felt it—
Not pain. Not resistance. But friction.
Something about it didn't give way.
It didn't collapse.
It didn't die.
It... absorbed?
No. Not even that.
It ignored me.
Like I didn't exist.
And that was worse.
I screamed—without sound, without mouth. I widened my horizon and dragged.
This time, something happened.
The shell cracked.
A hairline split, not in the object—but in space around it.
The void shuddered.
Not from me.
From something deeper.
A disturbance. As if the balance of the abyss had shifted.
As if I had woken something.
Not in the object.
Not inside it.
But beyond.
Something watching.
Something… waiting.
The object began to hum—not by will, not by voice, but by consequence. The same way a mountain hums when thunder splits the skies.
I backed away.
I had taken in what should not be taken.
And something had noticed.
What followed was not immediate.
But I could feel it.
The laws that once bent for me—creaking now. My hunger, once absolute, now faltered when I brushed too close to that thing.
Something inside me was… disrupted.
Not broken.
Not wounded.
Just disturbed.
My core vibrated with an unease I had no name for.
Was it fear?
Or shame?
Had I devoured something sacred?
No.
Not sacred.
Untouchable.
And I had touched it.
Even now, its shell clung to my essence. I had not consumed it whole—only pieces. Yet those pieces lingered, like bones of a forgotten god caught in my teeth.
And then the warning came.
Not from a voice.
Not from the System.
From the void itself.
A rumble—not in space, but in meaning.
My event horizon twitched. The void around me darkened—darker than darkness, as if something behind the veil had blinked open.
And saw me.
Not as a devourer.
But as a thief.
And then...
The stars went quiet.
I don't know how long I floated.
No message from the System. No sign of the Creed responding. Even the fragment of the World Creed buried within me grew cold, silent—as if not wanting to be seen.
I should have fled.
But my pride held me there.
I had consumed singularities. I had torn holes in existence. What could this thing do to me?
And then I felt it.
A pressure behind the stars.
A fold in the abyss.
A heartbeat—not mine—echoed across the void.
A new presence.
It did not arrive.
It simply was.
One moment, nothing.
The next, the sky had changed.
The space where galaxies once drifted now twisted—coiled inward like a serpent made of event horizons, folding reality like paper.
No light came from it.
No gravity pulled from it.
But the void around it... obeyed.
And that was the first sign of terror.
Because I knew, instinctively:
This one was not like me.
This one did not hunger.
It enforced.
It had no form.
Not yet.
But I could feel its boundary—a storm of unseen commandments wrapping through dimensions I could not access.
And it was heading toward the spot I had bitten—the broken object that still floated in eerie silence.
I backed away.
Its focus was not on me.
Not yet.
But I had left fingerprints on something forbidden.
And this thing had come to see.
Would it judge?
Would it act?
Would it devour me for what I had done?
I could not tell.
And I did not want to wait.
I began to fold space, to vanish beyond its perception.
But the stars didn't move.
My path... resisted.
Space, usually pliant beneath my Creed's command, now wavered.
Like it was considering.
Like it was asking.
Should I let you go?
A voice echoed across the cosmos—not words. Not language.
Just a presence.
Judgment.
As if something was weighing me.
The thing had not even looked at me.
And already, it had slowed me.
Already, I could feel its decision forming.
I reached deep into myself.
Into the core of my Creed.
I prepared to flee—not through space.
But through meaning.
Through the gap between hunger and law.
And just as I began to move—
The object I had touched—the one that should not break—
Began to glow.
Faint. Pale. Like a dying god remembering how to breathe.
A reaction?
Or a warning?
I couldn't tell.
But I knew, somehow—
This was only the beginning.
Something else was coming.
And it would not arrive kindly.